Not every subject of study is likely to arouse complex feelings in the learner to the extent they do when modern Israel is taught to Jews around the world.
by Robbie Gringras and Yonatan Ariel
A foreign correspondent friend once confided to us about reporting from Israel. “Do you want to know why there are so many more foreign correspondents stationed in Israel than in most other places in the world? It’s nothing to do with antisemitism or double standards. It’s just because Israel is so incredibly fascinating and complex!”
Since Makom – the Israel Education lab of the Jewish Agency for Israel – is labelled by Alex Sinclair as practicing a form of Israel education that applies “attractive complexity”, and as such we are the “good guys” according to Barry Chazan’s pertinent critique, it will come as no surprise that we agree Israel is fascinating. We also agree with Chazan that Israel – as subject matter – did not “invent” complexity. Every subject worthy of study is likely to be complex. But not every subject of study is likely to arouse complex feelings in the learner to the extent they do when modern Israel is taught to Jews around the world.
In this sense, there are really only two sides to addressing complexity – and pretty much all of us in the field address them both, in different ways.
There is the complexity of the subject-matter itself – “Israel is endlessly complicated!” And then there is the complexity of the learners’ response to the challenges Israel presents to them. In this latter sense, complexity is sometimes used as a euphemism for “discomfort” – “My emotional and intellectual response to what I have learned about Israel is, for want of a better word, complex…”
It is this second aspect of complexity – the way in which the subject of Israel meets the learner in their particular environment – that demands special attention.
Let’s take the example of the Kotel, when looking at this second aspect of complexity. There is probably little discomfort (“emotional complexity”) for the Orthodox learner to contemplate the Kotel from his home in Paris. In contrast, the Reform learner from San Francisco may well feel a great deal of discomfort (“complexity”) when contemplating the Kotel and its prayer arrangements. Here we can see that this “complexity of emotional response” arises when something jars in the encounter between an aspect of Israel, and the learner, the teacher, and their environment.
When this is the case, there are two key issues for the Israel educator. First, we must pay careful attention to what is going on in the learners’ world.
Just as it would be dumb to insist that the young woman from San Francisco must learn about the Kotel in exactly the same way as the boy from Paris, so it would be silly to suggest that the Parisian must address Women of the Wall in his first encounter with the Kotel. (In our opinion, both would be enriched by learning of both perspectives, but the structure of the learning, the “way in” would need to be different for each.)
Second, (how soon) do we wish to resolve discomfort?
a. Some will say that discomfort is a healthy state for growth.
These educators will constantly try to lead the learner to a “higher level of confusion” (Yonatan Ariel). Hence they will challenge the San Franciscan to think about freedom of worship for those Jews who wish to pray on the Temple Mount, or to apply thinking about social justice to the fact that the Kotel Plaza exists only due to the demolition of the Palestinian Mughrabi quarter in 1967. The Parisian would be asked to juxtapose his belief in the unifying nature of the Holy City of Jerusalem and the value of Jewish unity, with the conflict and strife within the Jewish People at the Kotel.
Yet if the learner is in a constant state of confusion, how can we ensure they will not lose interest, energy, conviction? Some of us find such internal discomfort stimulating, but it can give others a headache…
b. Some will say that discomfort is the educator’s enemy, and we must avoid it at all costs.
Some suggest this because their students live in a hostile environment where they hear more than enough “negatives” about Israel. Their students need affirmations of Israel’s place in their Jewish identity that they may internalize with ease, so as to “balance the playing field” that is biased against Israel, or to offer the balm of comfort to students under attack. Others avoid discomfort for fear it will “turn off” the learner. They aim to teach only that which the learner can digest without going through any cognitive dissonance. They wish to ensure the students see their own Jewish identity reflected back to themselves in the Jewish State, and so expose them only to those aspects of Israel that chime in with the students’ value system.
Yet what happens when in the first case the learner finds a grain or two of truth in Israel’s detractors’ accusations? Or when in the second case the learner (inevitably) finds that Israel is not the USA, nor is it France? What tools and experiences can we educators provide to empower the learner to deal with their complex feelings (response) when they find Israel is more complex (subject matter) than they had thought?
c. Still others will argue that the best way to resolve the discomfort of learning about an Israel whose complexity makes it difficult to digest, is activism. If the subject matter – Israel – is unattractive to us, we must work to change it!
But at what price? If learners’ response to any piece of information that troubles them is to insist on changing that information to suit their desires, when will the learners ever question themselves? Shouldn’t educators help them to question their own assumptions when examining different approaches to the good life?
In building this field of Israel Education it is the mission of us all to find wise and flexible answers to these questions. We would suggest that our next few tasks might include:
- Creating and modeling more thoughtful and sophisticated ways for celebrating and affirming Israel. Not all celebration need be superficial, and not all critique should be miserable!
- Developing clearer models for how informed critique can lead to activism in a thoughtful way that includes like-minded Israelis. In this way we might move from “battering” to “bettering” – to the benefit of both the learners and Israel itself.
- Working hard to embrace all different approaches to Israel Education, even if they would seem to go against one’s own philosophy. If a commitment to complexity in Israel education is to mean anything, it must also welcome complexity in the many forms it may take!
Yonatan Ariel and Robbie Gringras are, respectively, the Executive Director and Creative Director of Makom, the Israel Education Lab of the Jewish Agency for Israel.
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This is pilpul in all it’s ridiculous glory. The issues under discussion are political not educational. Complexity arguments are an excuse for either doing nothing, a perverse form of daas Torah, or let the grownups or Bibi decide. Life is always dealing with complexity. The role of supposedly neutral Jewish bodies is to help empowered Jewish actors make informed choices.
The level of intellectual masturbation in this “dialogue” is astonishing. It is fine if senior academic and institutional staff want to engage in such discussion but the challenge for Israel Education has to do with “The Jew on the Street”, not the “Jew in the Ivory tour.” I had the privilege to work with Barry Chazan during my tenure as the inaugural CEO of Israel Experience, Inc. and respect the research he has done on the impact of Israel experiences on Jewish identity. I believe Alex Sinclair is the same Alex Sinclair i knew when our families were members of Agudath Israel congregation in Caldwell, NJ. I have not yet had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of either Yonatan or Robbie but perhaps will in the future. Knowing Barry and to some extent Alex, i am comfortable assuming Yonatan and Robbie are both equally serious and rigorous Jewish educators. That being said, I find the discussion on complexity in Israel Education ludicrous. While I feel I am well educated both professionally and Jewishly, my perspective on this polite dialogue is that is has no relevance “al ha-karka” (on the ground). With all due respect, the educators just don’t get it. When Israel Experience, Inc. was created, Israel Experience programs were run almost exclusively by educators at high school youth organizations. Research conducted (largely but not exclusively by Barry Chazan) had in fact shown that the greatest impact on Jewish identity was seen with Israel Experience trips during the teen years, not while in college. Efforts to motivate youth group educators to create shorter, less expensive Israel Experience trips was met by resistance – for any educational value, the trips needed to remain long. This intransigence ultimately led to the evolution of Birthright Israel with a less difficult collegiate focus (philanthropists took their money elsewhere) and the ultimate demise of high school Israel Experience programs. This type of educator-based dialogue is fine for halls of academia but irrelevant to the execution of meaningful Israel Education. The example cited above with the orthodox Parisian and reform San Franciscan is a good example of the problem. Their views on Israel has everything to do with what’s going on in the learners world but much less to do with Israel itself. The reality is they would have the same “discomfort” understanding mechitzah (separation of men and women during prayer in synagogue), kashruth or being shomer shabbat – all dimensions of Jewish identity not related to Israel. It’s all about what’s going on in their world – something Israel educators routinely overlook when trying to find educational solutions. My biggest fear that comes from this type of intellectual dialogue as well as the lack of recognizing the learner’s world (dare I say, the differences in those markets) is that people will simply walk away. Irrespective of what semantic you use (complexity/discomfort) the REALITY is that most Jews, especially younger Jews, have a marginal relationship with Israel at best. By focusing on and discussing the complexity of Israel Education, the Jewish educators involved are succeeding on what was mentioned above – causing headaches. So for the majority of Jews, rather than diving into the complexities of Israel Education, they simply walk away – it’s not of a high enough value to them to take the time to dive in. While those immersed in the field have the luxury of this kind of ivory tower discussion, for those in need of understandable Israel Education, the clock is ticking. Rather than discussing the relative merits of Israel Education complexity, i would suggest these educational leaders spend time developing simpler elements for learners to embrace. Simpler does not mean dishonest, or disingenuous, it does not mean diluted or lacking in fact and it does not mean to ignore the truth. It does mean that if we can’t figure out ways to make interest in Israel Education higher by making it simpler, Israel and the Jewish people will pay an enormous price.